Growth of World Tourism

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fountainhall

Growth of World Tourism

Post by fountainhall »

Interesting article in the Guardian today. World Tourism has grown from 25 million tourists in 1950 to 166 million in 1979, 435 million in 1990 to 1.4 billion today. Since some people make more than one trip a year, the figures do not represent 1.4 billion individual tourists, but it illustrates how tourism has become an important element in the world economy.
In 2018, it was worth about $1.7tn (£1.3tn), or about 2% of total global GDP. Even the UNWTO [United Nations World Tourism Organization] is struggling to keep up, with current figures vastly exceeding expectations.
The destination of tourists and where they come from are best illustrated by graphs. From these it can quickly be seen that France remains the most popular destination. Indeed, Europe alone receives more than half of all world tourists.

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Not surprisingly China produces more outbound tourists than any other country - by far. 143 million Chinese traveled abroad compared to the next highest, Germany, at 92 million. The chart illustrates very clearly how tourism from Europe and the Americas to Thailand is now a small fraction. I am pretty sure a similar chart for 1990 would show a far larger percentage. One reason for the fall off in gay tourism, perhaps? At least for gay tourists from the west visiting gay venues.

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In future the growth of China's outbound tourism seems unstoppable. Granted it started from a zero base since the 1949 revolution right through to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1975. I cannot find a statistic for 1990 but the number of outbound tourists in 1993 was just 3.7 million - and a good few of these were to Hong Kong and Macao.

On spending, figures for 2018 from the UNWTO quoted in a Forbes article show that the Chinese spent nearly a fifth of total spending at $258 billion. U.S. travelers came in second at $135 billion.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/j ... on-holiday
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericrosen/ ... deb0c257ea
firecat69

Re: Growth of World Tourism

Post by firecat69 »

Lots of interesting information in those links . I am amazed at how little Italians travel compared to other European countries . I wonder why? I am not surprised Europeans travel so much and so much of it is in Europe.After all many Euro countries have generous vacation times The flights and travel time are so short that vacations are not taken up by spending 24 hours or more in a silver tube packed like sardines . USA world travel ( in comparison to its population) is sort of minimal outside of the relatively short flights to Mexico and Canada.

China is such a vast country , it would be interesting on average how many miles they travel to their destinations. Also would be interesting what the make up is of the same traveller making multiple trips. I wonder if Honk Kong is considered an international destination.

The one that is clear is that airplane manufacturers will continue to have a favorable market for years to come if we don't poison ourselves .

Funny my first trip around Europe as an 18 years old was on a Eurail Pass. Many years later I wanted to repeat some of those destinations but the cost had become considerably more then jumping around on Ryanair and Easyjet . I guess that is progress but maybe not.
fountainhall

Re: Growth of World Tourism

Post by fountainhall »

I also wondered if Hong Kong is considered an outbound destination. This article from the China Daily from earlier this year gives the top ten outbound destinations. Hong Kong is one, so clearly the number of Hong Kong visitors have to be deducted to get a rest-of-the-world figure.

The top 10 in order are –

Thailand
Japan
Hong Kong
Indonesia
Vietnam
Singapore
Malaysia
Taipei
Cambodia
Philippines

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/2 ... 8ce_2.html

According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, 51 million mainland Chinese visited Hong Kong but it does not state how many were overnight stayers, how many visit on day trips and how many were repeat visitors. The Hong Kong Tourism Board estimates that there is an increasing number of short-term 2- and 3-day stays with mainland Chinese preferring to travel further afield during the longer National Day holiday. My guess is therefore that excluding Hong Kong, the number of journeys abroad was 92 million.

At least one website analysing outbound Chinese tourism stresses that independent tours are closing the gap on group tours – and in some destinations have overtaken them. In 2013 the number of independent Chinese travellers was “about 37% of the Chinese outbound market”. By 2017 that had risen to 42%. A May 2018 survey found that nearly 50% of Chinese outbound travellers now prefer independent travel.

London’s luxury Savoy Hotel reported that China made its top 10 origin markets for the first time in August 2018. A year earlier it was not even in the top 20!

https://skift.com/2018/10/29/independen ... ur-groups/
firecat69

Re: Growth of World Tourism

Post by firecat69 »

Another question I have about those statistics . How are they able to separate business travel which continues to increase from tourist travel. I would they guess they cannot but I also guess FH may have the answer!
fountainhall

Re: Growth of World Tourism

Post by fountainhall »

firecat69 wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 8:11 pm Another question I have about those statistics . How are they able to separate business travel which continues to increase from tourist travel. I would they guess they cannot but I also guess FH may have the answer!
I'm sorry I don't. I know that some arrival cards have a series of boxes from which one should be ticked - Taiwan and Thailand, for example. This gives Immigration information to pass to the relevant national tourism organisation re the purpose of visitor trips. But this is not true everywhere. Hong Kong has nothing on the arrival card, but it does have a small army of staff doing brief questionnaires at the airport and they used to get some information this way. On the other hand, a vast number of visitors to Hong Kong come by ferry from Macau and Zhuhai, the new fast train or cross by land at Shenzhen. I have used the Shenzhen crossing a couple of dozen times. It is always absolutely packed with rushing crowds and I doubt if anyone would stop to complete anything.
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